


Reanimated

by negickapologist (neganstonguething)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Gen, One-Shot, canon-divergent, one-sided romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 08:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11733339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neganstonguething/pseuds/negickapologist
Summary: "One person has to die." That's what she said, and that's what happened.Negan has some regrets.





	Reanimated

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Just a little tidbit here--I spread out the time between Sasha killing herself and Negan confronting her about being used as bait for Alexandria. I think in the show it was a day or two, but in this, it's a couple of weeks. Enough time for Negan and Sasha to have a couple of worthwhile conversations.

“Fuck!” 

Negan doesn’t remember the feeling of the concrete beneath his knees or the sound of the heavy prison door swinging shut behind him. As darkness swells around him, all he can think about is the form sitting propped up against the prison wall, unmoving. 

Sasha looks dead. Hell, she probably  _ is _ dead. But Negan doesn’t intend to let her stay that way.

Sasha Williams is incredible. She’s headstrong and brave and so very loyal to those she cares about. Even before knowing all this, Negan had taken a fancy to her, but now that the two of them have exchanged words more than just a few times, he respects her even more. He likes her, a lot--wishes he could convince her to join him at the Sanctuary. She’s adamant that she won’t, though, and very minimally compliant to just about any of Negan’s requests.

She’s been stubborn about Rick. Negan knows better than to think she doesn’t have Alexandria or Rick or any of her people back home in her best interest, despite insisting that she doesn’t. But at the same time, it’s admirable how adamant she is about keeping to her word. Negan longs for that. Wants to have her included in his circle, and to be able to brag about having someone work for him that possesses that insurmountable loyalty.

He’d take her by his side any day. She’d be the fucking queen and he’d be the fucking king and they’d rule the shit out of this place together, and nothing would ever be able to take them down. 

Negan doesn’t even necessarily mean that romantically. Hell, he’d take her as a partner any time, provided she was agreeable to that kind of thing, but he can also sympathize with her not exactly biting on that. There’s a lot riding on their relationship in their history. He killed her last boyfriend, after all. Not exactly something you jump into a new relationship with under your belt. This world is fucked up, but Negan can understand not wanting to hook up with the guy who took a baseball bat to your last boyfriend’s skull.

So even if she’d decided to comply for strictly business purposes, he’d take her. She could teach him things, and he could teach her things. They could recreate the world together. People would be thanking them. 

Negan wouldn’t deny that he’d fantasized about it ever since he’d imprisoned Sasha, either. The stretch had been all of a couple of weeks, and he’d seen so much potential in her that he’d started to entertain the idea pretty damn frequently. Most of his conversations with her opened up with him extending the offer to her yet again, and they almost always ended with her not-so-politely telling him no.

The closest to any compliance with anything he’d ever gotten from her was when she’d agreed to use herself as bait for the trip back to Alexandria, to get the rebellious community back into a state of compliance with the rules the Sanctuary had set out for them. It’d taken plenty of argument and more compromise than Negan was comfortable with, but under the agreement that only one person had to die, Sasha had given in.

Negan hadn’t been ready for that one death to be her.

Now, he’s freaking the fuck out. He doesn’t know how she wound up dead, but he does know that if he has any chance at saving her, he’s got to act quickly. In an instant, he has her on the ground, his hand cradling the back of her head like a newborn’s.

Okay, okay, CPR…

Negan’s done CPR before. Back in his coaching days, he’d been required to be certified to even so much as work in the field. It’d been as a college softball coach that Negan had been put into a position that required him to resuscitate someone. She was a little brunette with wide brown eyes and a curve in her hips that had been hard to ignore. She was snarky, sassy...a trend of things that Negan had always considered attractive in a woman.

The girl had collapsed--just up and dropped one day. It’d scared the shit out of Negan, and he’d made quick work of starting CPR on her. Breathing air into her lungs, checking for any sign of a pulse, chest compressions, the whole works. She’d come to with a violent gasp of air, been whisked away by EMS, and then shown back up a week later with an impish smile on her face and a goal to make it up to Negan.

And he’d indulged. Of course he had. No strings attached, one quick deal, because he wasn’t shitty enough already for cheating on his wife with his neighbor. Negan had never been good at being a good person. He figured acknowledging this was plenty of punishment, but nowadays, he disagrees.

Now that Lucille’s gone.

Not that it matters right now. What matters is getting this girl back onto her feet. 

Negan operates on sheer muscle memory, dropping down and checking for a pulse, for any sign of obstruction in her airway...no obstruction, and the tiniest of heartbeats. Frail and on the verge of fading away entirely. So weak and diminutive compared to Sasha’s normal, powerful presentation.

It feels like he frets for hours about what to do next, but in reality, it’s only a second or so. How again did this happen? What the fuck is going on right now? Faintly, he makes out an empty ziploc baggie in the right side of his periphery, and he knows better than to question it. Her death...it’s in whatever was in that bag.

But no time to dwell on that right now. Negan does the only thing he can think to do next: he drops down and plugs her nose with one hand, parts her lips, and attempts to breathe life into her from his very own lungs. 

How strange to be doing this right now. The time Negan had wanted to put his mouth on Sasha’s, he had hoped it would have been under a more, erm...intimate setting. Preferably with those strong arms curled around his neck and those plump lips moving against his own. 

But her life is so much more important than her body, and contrary to popular belief, Negan isn’t a total shithead.

He tries once, twice, three times. Pull away, inhale, drop down, exhale deeply, repeat. Over and over, until it starts to feel like all hope is lost. Sasha is just as unmoving as ever, her limp body not reacting with so much as a twitch. 

And then there’s a feeling. An unnerving sensation that Negan’s not alone. The very same feeling he’d encountered when Lucille had died in that hospital bed and come back to life. It hits like a mallet on a gong, the realization of what’s happening, and Negan sits up so abruptly that the change in axis gives him vertigo.

Sasha’s eyes are open wide, her irises a dull, dark gray with redness swimming around the whites. Under her eyes appear dark and sunken, and her pale lips fall open as something akin to an exhale dribbles out. Her gaze travels slowly and unevenly about the surroundings, before it falls on the shape of the man above her. 

Negan knows she’s gone, but goddamn, it sucks to see her like this.

He’s not going to wax overly sentimental about it or anything, but shit, this is rough. Sasha’s dead. She’s dead and now she’s reanimated, and this is not the way Negan ever wanted to see her. Sasha deserves better. She deserves so much better, and for the briefest of instances, Negan actually regrets having held her captive instead of trying something else for her. Maybe give her her own room, or let her go back to Alexandria. Figure something else out.

She didn’t have to die.

“Jesus  _ shit _ , Sash…” Negan groans, distraught, as he watches her push herself up into a sitting position. A garbled hiss rumbles up straight from the back of her throat, and she fixes her undead stare on him. Her teeth snap together hungrily, and she brings a grayed hand up to reach out for him. “What the fuck did you  _ do _ ?”

For a moment, he’s transfixed by her movements--movements so unlike her own. Sasha is deliberate, but her corpse is erratic. Sasha is strong and decisive, but this thing is slow and so very unsure of every movement. Sasha is clever, and her undead form is just...hungry.

With a choked snarl, the now-walker lunges for Negan, and he whips to the side, just barely missing her attack. His knife comes out of its holster on instinct, and as she dives for him again, he catches her shoulder and readies the blade for its assault on her skull.

Negan feels guilty. He didn’t want this for Sasha. She had so much potential, but now, here she is. A wilted flower, dead and crumbling right before his eyes. She could’ve meant so many great things for so many people--a true blessing to the grounds of the Sanctuary. Hell, Negan sure could’ve used her around.

He really wants things to work out with the other communities, too. It’d be damn convenient if there arrived a time when everyone could operate smoothly without worrying about revolts or uproars or any of the like. Having Sasha on Negan’s side would have benefited him so vastly on just that front.

But it’s not just the diplomatic benefits he’s disappointed about. As he sinks the knife into Sasha’s temple and watches the last dregs of life fade from her eyes, he finds himself distraught. He’s going to miss everything about her. Her attitude, and the way she kept her shoulders held high. Her sharp tongue, and the fierceness in those eyes of hers. How she never once backed down from Negan, even after he’d had her in his very own grasp. She’s truly someone that’s going to be missed. Probably everyone who has laid eyes on her is going to feel a loss today.

Her body crumples, and Negan bows forward to catch her in his grip. Her head is limp and falls unevenly onto his elbow. Her hands sound like rocks against the concrete as her arms drop. She’s gone. Just...gone.

Negan lowers her to the ground and scoots back. He glares daggers at her corpse, curses under his breath. Stands up, socks the wall, and roars in frustration at how much it hurts. There’s blood, but he doesn’t care. It’s not just about losing his one chance at calming things down in Alexandria. It’s about losing a friend, a crush, a potentially life-changing human being.

It takes several minutes for Negan to put himself back together. He reminds himself that at least he was able to make the final decision this time--that he hadn’t cowered away like he had with Lucille. But damn, this is hard. Sasha’s dead, and no matter how he spins it, it’s all his fault. He can blame himself for having kept her captive for so long, or he can blame himself for having to bury the knife into the side of her head. Either way, he’s guilty.

She deserves more than this. As Negan glares across the room at the body, he decides this. It takes some convincing, but eventually, Negan manages to talk himself into curling his arms underneath Sasha’s head and knees. She’s much smaller than him, but dead weight. It’s a challenge to pick her up, and the raw, bleeding spot on Negan’s knuckles from his earlier display of frustration sings painfully. 

He nudges the big metal door open once more and steps out. After a second of walking, Simon rounds a corner nearby. Negan orders the man to find a good place to dig a hole. It’s time to give Sasha a decent burial. 

It’s not much of an apology, but it’s something.

And after that, he’s got to ask around and find out who slipped her whatever was in that bag.


End file.
